Trump against AI, more or less

Last Saturday, Donald Trump posted a poll on X to resolve one of the most pressing issues ahead of November’s mid-term elections, namely: what to call artificial intelligence.

“The terms ‘artificial intelligence’ are incorrect and rather uninspiring,” he wrote, proposing three alternatives: Superior Intelligence, Extreme Intelligence and Supreme Intelligence. A few days later, speaking at the UN General Assembly, he went a step further, proposing a new name for the technology: SI, or superintelligence.

Trump has long been very close to the technology sector, but in recent months he has forged a particularly close alliance with the artificial intelligence industry (we will continue to use the traditional term, with all due respect to Trump’s proposal). Over the past year, for example, President Trump has repeatedly yielded to pressure from the sector, refraining from signing executive orders that would have regulated – even if only tentatively – the development of AI.

As for the debate over the past few weeks regarding security in the sector, Trump has dismissed it as a “hoax”, on a par, in his view, with climate change. In short, the issue doesn’t even arise; the important thing is to rush ahead and let China overtake us.

This same stance influences his view on data centres, which, according to the latest polls, are among the few issues on which Republicans, Democrats and the undecided share a rather hostile sentiment. Not so for Trump, who has branded the widespread protests across the United States against these facilities as follows: “The only reason communities across the United States should not want data centres is if they want to end up being backward and poor.”

Also this week, Trump proposed the creation of an ‘AI Force’, modelled on the Space Force – the armed force he established in 2019 to oversee all aerospace operations. The AI Force would serve the same purpose, but with artificial intelligence: it could all boil down to the appointment of a government official for the sector, selected from among the leading figures in Silicon Valley.

Beyond the proposals, the problem – particularly given that the mid-term elections are approaching – is that AI is unpopular and, consequently, championing it risks making one unpopular (though not as much as the effects of the war in Iran on fuel prices, of course). This has also been recognised within the Republican Party, which at local and state level has adopted positions quite different from Trump’s, openly blocking the construction of new data centres, for example, as happened in Texas.

The idea of organising a poll to ‘decide’ on a new name for AI should therefore be viewed in this light: Trump feels trapped in an unfavourable position which, for some reason, he does not feel he can abandon; and, being the great populist that he is, he realises this and feels he must do something. Unable to take the most obvious course of action – namely, changing his stance on AI and data centres – he is pinning his hopes on the power of naming: ‘What if it’s all down to that name, “artificial intelligence”?’

So here are the alternative suggestions – ‘extreme’, ‘superior’, ‘supreme’, ‘super’ – which, incidentally, are no more reassuring than the original. However important marketing may be, the problem is not the name of the AI, but rather everything that the acronym has come to represent for millions of people, across the political spectrum: the idea that a large part of the economy is based on investment by hyperscalers, which bring neither wealth nor jobs but end up producing a series of noisy and polluting data centres, set to increase the bills of those living nearby. All this for a technology which – as the heads of the companies developing it themselves say – is set to steal our jobs, if it doesn’t kill us all first, of course.

Companies in the sector have realised that the problem lies in communication and are now revising their messaging, at least in part, by focusing more on the beneficial effects of technology rather than on the spectre of AGI or the end of the world. Unfortunately, daily news coverage does not allow for this, given that the companies themselves continue to uncover cases where their experimental models have slipped beyond their own control.

Trump and the bigwigs of the AI industry are thus locked in a morbid embrace: the former believes it is vital not to let them go, whilst the latter have everything to gain from a presidency so closely aligned with their interests. The point is that every four years – or rather, every two – there is an election, and this time the outcome risks being decided in part by antipathy towards data centres. At this point, let’s just change their names too: problem solved.